


For Love and Country

by onlynarrative



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: 2016 US Presidential Election, Five Stages of Grief, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 08:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9115177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlynarrative/pseuds/onlynarrative
Summary: First, there was just staring. Then, there was everything else.Leslie grieves after the 2016 election.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by Leslie's post-election letter to America, which can be read in all its glory here: https://www.yahoo.com/tv/parks-and-recreation-leslie-knope-writes-letter-to-america-following-donald-trumps-victory-142904267.html

**1\. Denial**

Leslie didn’t cry. She just stared.

The CNN anchors were talking, but she wasn’t paying attention anymore.  The laptop on the coffee table in front of her was open to Google’s live update page, currently displaying a red blanket across the country.  It was burned into Leslie’s retinas, that much red. All those states.

It was like the country was bleeding.

“Babe,” she heard a voice say from beside her.  “Babe, please talk to me.”

She looked over at Ben.  His hand was on her knee, smoothing the material of her pantsuit. She’d picked her red one for the occasion. It felt wrong not sporting Democrat blue, but Hillary had rocked the red, so Leslie figured she should rock along in solidarity.

Ben’s eyes were wet. She tried not to focus on that.

“It’s not possible,” she said, her voice quiet yet unbroken.  “He needed Ohio and North Carolina and Florida…”

“I know, babe,” Ben said, but Leslie didn’t hear him.

“538 said Hillary had a 70% chance of winning. Slate said she’d win by three points,” she continued.  “MSNBC.  CNN.  The New York Times. All of them, _all of them,_ said Hillary was going to win.”

Ben was rubbing her back now, moving his hand from between her shoulder blades down to the base of her spine and back up again.  “Leslie,” he said, and he was clearly crying now, which meant that Leslie couldn’t look at him.  “Leslie, we need to go to bed. It’s 3am.  We need to go to work in the morning.”

“What do people see in him?” Leslie said, not loudly but definitely not in a whisper.  She flung a hand in a wild gesture, and it collided with her cardboard cutout of Susan B. Anthony. “The man is psychotic.  He’s a moron.  He’s racist, sexist, xenophobic…he’s practically a criminal! No, he _is_ a criminal. He makes Jeremy Jamm look like a Pawnee Goddess.”

On TV, Trump was coming to the stage for his acceptance speech. His _acceptance speech_.  Leslie almost threw up in the back of her mouth.

“I can’t watch this,” Ben said, and he leaned forward and grabbed the TV remote. The screen went dark. “I’m sorry,” he said to Leslie. “I know it’s important that we watch, and I know that we can’t shut down, but tonight…I can’t watch that tonight.”

“I know,” Leslie said.  She still didn’t look at him.  She still felt like she might throw up.  Or scream.

She wanted to go wake up Sonia, just to hold her. She wanted to call Ann. She wanted to bury her face in Ben’s chest and cry until the nightmare was over.

She couldn’t bring herself to do any of that.  All she could do was stare.

 

**2\. Anger**

Leslie called in to work the next morning.  Part of her said that her country needed her help, but the louder part said that her country had betrayed her, and if it needed her help so badly then it shouldn’t have elected a pig as its next president.

It was the first sick day she’d taken in years.

Ben went to work.  He hugged her before he left, his chin resting on the top of her head. She could feel his heart beating underneath her cheek.  “I don’t want to leave you,” he said. “Ever, but especially not today.”

“No,” she said, “go to work.  See people.  Help them get through it.” She closed her eyes. “There’s just something I need to do.”

Ben nodded, and she helped him load the kids in the car so he could take them to daycare.  When Leslie moved to buckle Sonia into her car seat, she almost burst into tears.  Her daughter was so young.  She didn’t know that the world had just been pulled out from under her, and somehow that made it even more painful.

Once they were gone, Leslie got in her car and drove.  She drove all the way out of Pawnee, to the woods almost on the brink of the next city.  She parked in front of a cabin and second-guessed herself all the way to the front door.  It was a long shot. He’d probably be at work.

The door opened. Ron didn’t look surprised to see her.

“Knope,” he said, somewhat coldly, and Leslie straightened her spine.

“I am inconceivably angry at you,” she said. “I will never forgive you for Morning Star as long as I live, and I consider it an irrevocable betrayal to our friendship.

Ron raised his eyebrows. “You drove onto my private property to tell me that?”

“No,” Leslie said.  “I drove onto your private property because you’re the only person I know who keeps their axe and their whiskey within reaching distance of each other.”

Ron nodded and stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind him.  He beckoned her to the backyard, gesturing to his pile of wood.

“The whiskey’s in the shed,” he volunteered, and she went and grabbed the bottle.  They poured two glasses and took turns chopping the wood, Leslie’s swings getting more and more aggressive.

She didn’t realize she was cursing Trump’s name until she saw Ron’s face, staring at her like he wasn’t sure if he should take the axe away.  “What?” she spat, not in the mood for his pity. Or anyone’s pity.  “I’m angry.”

“I can see that,” Ron said. “Why are you angry?  Because this festering sinkhole we call democracy finally cracked under the pressure of your ridiculous expectations?”

Leslie threw the axe away.  “Listen,” she said to Ron, her blood warm from the whiskey. “I do not have the patience for any of your bullshit.  I had to look my two-year-old daughter in the eye today. I had to listen to NPR talk about the first hundred days of a Trump administration.  I watched Hillary Clinton give a _concession_ speech. You,” she stabbed him with her finger, “cannot _touch_ me.”

She glanced around for the axe, but she’d flung it too far away.  Instead, she grabbed the whiskey and took a swig, but she didn’t feel anything anymore.

Ron simply sat on his log, staring into his glass.  When he continued to stay silent, Leslie narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t vote, did you?”

“No,” Ron said shortly, “I did not.  I do not believe that contributing my voice to a broken and pointless system is going to fix or change anything.

Before Leslie could go off again, Ron continued, “But Diane did. She brought the girls with her. They came home talking about how great it was going to be when there was a girl like them in the White House.”

Leslie felt her eyes start to sting. “I bet they were pretty sad this morning,” she said. Ron didn’t respond, but she could’ve sworn she saw their hurt in his eyes.

“Your anger is significant,” he said, standing up and collecting her whiskey glass.  “I respect that.  Your country has disappointed you, and while I think it was foolish for you to have believed in it at all, your disappointment is valid.”  Leslie didn’t say anything. He continued. “I understand that this is a temporary truce between us.  However, I will also say that while this moronic bully is the present, he is not the future.  Time passes, Leslie.  Not even Trump can control that.”

Ron turned and walked back into the house. Leslie didn’t follow him. Instead, she went back to her car and drove home. She turned the radio off.

 

**3\. Bargaining**

“Milwaukee!” Leslie shouted at work the next day, scaring the hell out of Tom. He’d come in claiming a meeting in city hall, but Leslie was pretty sure he was just there to make sure she wasn’t going completely insane.

He jumped at her exclamation.  “What?” he said. “What does that word mean?”

Leslie pretended not to hear him.  “60,000 votes in Milwaukee!” she said.  “In exchange for everyone’s souls.  That’s a fair deal, right? There’s gotta be a demon out there in need of some souls.  It’s a win-win for everyone, except for the fact that we lose our souls. But that’s whatever, who needs a soul anyway?”

“What?” Tom said again, staring at her like she’d mistaken an Armani for a Louis Vuitton. “Leslie, that’s a terrible idea. On a million levels. What are you even saying right now? What demon?  Where’s Milwaukee?”

Then again, maybe Leslie was going completely insane.

 

**4\. Depression**

Not even Ben approved of Leslie’s proposed demon deal. She didn’t push the issue, but she kept it on a sticky note at the edge of her desk just in case. (Milwaukee, 60,000. At least nine souls.) Then she called her local election office, her electors, and everyone she knew in the House of Representatives.

None of it changed anything.

Leslie wished, more than anything, that it was easy.  She wished she could just put on her pantsuit and face the day, armed with a sunny disposition and a go-getter’s attitude.  But she couldn’t. It just kept hitting her over and over, in huge crushing waves that attempted to swallow her whole.

Her country, this country that she loved, had elected Donald Trump as its next president.

She kept remembering November 8th.  Early evening November 8th, when nothing had been called and the anticipation was building in her chest. Everything had seemed so hopeful.  She and Ben had even discussed keeping the kids awake through it all, so they could see Hillary Rodham Clinton make herstory.

God, that was only a few days ago, but it felt like years. It felt like a different lifetime. It _was_ a different lifetime; it was a fossil memory, an artifact from the last part of time before Donald Trump was president-elect of the United States.

She doesn’t remember an ending.  In her memory, she stays on her couch forever, clutching her husband and trying not to get crushed under the world falling down around them.

She’d put all those feelings—the sadness, the hopelessness—on the backburner. Over the course of a few days, Leslie managed to ignore them nudging at the back of her brain, creeping their way to the front of her thoughts.  And then one day, she woke up, and there they were, front, center, and completely unavoidable.  They demanded her attention.  They refused to be shoved away any longer.

People had wondered what it would take to break Leslie Knope.  This was the answer. Leslie was broken and defeated and the pantsuit felt like a lie, like a symbol of loss instead of a symbol of a movement.  When she realized that she didn’t own anything else, she choked back tears, not even sure anymore why she was crying.

Ben noticed.  Everyone noticed, but no one said anything.  Most of them were grieving, too. They gave Leslie hugs and waffles with extra extra whipped cream, and it helped some, but not a lot.  Not enough to feel normal. Not even enough to feel like everything might one day be okay.

Then Ann showed up on Leslie’s doorstep.

Leslie nearly crushed her with the force of her hug.  “Ann Ann Ann Ann Ann Ann,” she yelled over and over, and for a minute she sounded like her old self.  The noise drew Ben to the front door, and when he saw Ann, his face split into a relieved grin.

“Finally,” he said, and then he disappeared up the stairs.

Leslie’s arms were wrapped firmly around Ann’s shoulders, and she wasn’t sure she was ever going to let go. Ann dropped what she was holding—Leslie hadn’t even noticed she was holding something—and hugged her back, hard.

“You’re here,” Leslie said, like she couldn’t quite believe it, and she felt Ann nod.

“Of course,” she said, burrowing her face in Leslie’s shoulder.  “I came as soon as I could; I just had to deal with a few things at work…and convince Chris to take Oliver for a whole weekend.”

Leslie pulled her face back slightly.  “He’s going to be okay, right?”

Ann laughed. “Of course he is.  And he knew it was important for me to be here."

After a few minutes, Ann managed to extract herself from Leslie’s grip, and Leslie pulled her inside the house. The thing Ann had brought with her turned out to be hot chocolate, which was immediately deemed priority number one.  Leslie sat at the kitchen counter, directing Ann to the milk and the whipped cream.

“So,” Ann said, setting two full mugs on the counter. “I had a thought on the plane.”

Leslie took a huge sip and immediately burned her mouth.  Ann winced in sympathy.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  I always tell the kids to wait, but…”

“But there was whipped cream and you got ahead of yourself. I know, Leslie. I’m your _best friend_.”  She paused, then continued, “That’s why I think you need to write your way out of this.”

Leslie raised her eyebrows. “I need to what?”

“You’re not an unknown name anymore,” Ann said, clearly having thought this through.  “People know who you are, and they care about what you have to say.  You have a voice, Leslie, and you need to use it.  It’ll be good for you.  It’ll be good for all of us.”

Leslie was crying again, which Ann seemed to have anticipated because she had tissues out and ready.  “You can do this,” she said as she rubbed Leslie’s back in slow circles.  Leslie nodded and drank some of her (now slightly cooler) hot chocolate.  “Okay,” she said, and Ann brought her laptop over to her and opened it up.

“Do it now,” she told Leslie. “Do it now while you feel everything at the surface.  We need you authentic, Leslie Knope.  You’re at your best when you’re completely yourself.”

Leslie opened a document.  Then burst into tears again.  Ann just held her tight, whispering to herself that she should’ve brought more hot chocolate.

It was going to be a long, dark night.

 

**5\. Acceptance**

Once Leslie managed to start writing, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Ann eventually retreated to the guest bedroom, promising to proofread what Leslie had in the morning. Now, Leslie was by herself, consuming more mugs of hot chocolate than was possible to count and determined to write until she had no words left. Until she had said everything that she needed to say.

While she wrote, she thought about her friends. Her husband. Her children.  She thought of all of them fighting the fight together, always, as they had before and would again.  She thought about Ron, telling her that Trump was not the future, that time would pass, that this would end.  She thought about her mother, and her grandmother, and all the women who had ended up on her wall over the years.

She thought about her daughter, who would grow up knowing that there had never been someone like her in the White House, and whose early childhood years would be lived under the presidency of someone who did not think she was worth more than her body.

That thought made Leslie’s blood boil.

She wrote out her anger and depression and everything in between into one article that was quickly becoming too long for an article and was instead practically a novella.  She wrote for people like her, people like her friends, and especially for young girls like her daughter, who needed to be told again and again that they were smart and capable and valuable.

She thought a lot about acceptance.  Whether or not she could ever accept any of this.

She decided that she couldn’t.

In the coming months, she would fight. She would tape signs that said THIS IS NOT NORMAL to her desk and her refrigerator and her office door, to keep herself from becoming complacent.  She would keep track of all the cabinet appointments and write sternly-worded letters denouncing each and every one of them.  She would subscribe to every newspaper she could find and read every scrap of news they printed, keeping herself as informed as she could be, never letting her guard down.

But that night, after she finished writing, after she had wiped her face of the tears that had leaked their way down her cheeks, she went into her daughter’s room and leaned against the doorframe.

Sonia didn’t know what was happening outside.

She didn’t know what her mother was fighting to protect.

She didn’t know that there was a team out there, waiting to fight for her rights and the rights of so many others that had been beaten down and trampled for far too long.

Leslie knew.  She knew what lay ahead. She knew what needed to be done. She knew they would get to work.

For now, she watched her daughter sleep. She waited for the sunrise.


End file.
